13. No part of these by-laws shall be amended, altered, or repealed, unless proposition is submitted in writing covering the proposed amendment at least thirty days before the meeting when it is to be acted upon, when, if two-thirds of the members present and voting express themselves in favor of the change, the same shall be made. After the reception and introduction of those present, dinner was served. Hon. Thomas J. Gargan presided, having as his guest Paul B. Du Chaillu, the noted explorer, author of _The Viking Age_, _The Land of the Midnight Sun_, and numerous other works. Upon the conclusion of the dinner, Mr. Gargan arose and said: “In the name of the committee who have issued the call for the organization of an American Historical Society, whose special line of research shall be the history of the Irish element in the composition of the American people, I congratulate you on the success of this initial movement and bid you a cordial welcome to this meeting. “But little has yet been done to show how much the sons of Ireland and their descendants have contributed to the settlement, to the civilization and reclamation of this country, as also to its liberation from oppression. “In our proposed work we will discard the legendary and the mythical. We recognize that we are living in a scientific age at the end of the nineteenth century, the age of the microscope and the X-ray, and we ask for the acceptance of no historical data that will not bear the modern search-light and that is not sufficiently proven. “We claim that due credit has not been given to the Irish contributions. That through prejudice or through gross ignorance there has grown up a myth about the Scotch-Irish. Of all the myths that have crept into history this is the most mythical. Why any man should be ashamed of his honorable Irish ancestry surpasses my comprehension and subjects the man who attempts to deny it to the scorn and contempt of all honest and intelligent men. [Illustration: THOMAS J. GARGAN BOSTON, MASS. ] [Illustration: JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE BOSTON, MASS. ] [Illustration: JOHN D. CRIMMINS NEW YORK CITY ] [Illustration: JOSEPH SMITH LOWELL, MASS. ] EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE “Descendants of Irishmen may well feel proud of the honorable part which the Irish race has borne in the settlement and development of the country. As early as 1649, Cromwell, by his cruel policy, transported 45,000 of them beyond the seas. A large number came to Barbadoes. Many of them afterwards came to the continent of North America. “The revolution of 1688 in England, and the acts of British Parliament to discourage manufactures in Ireland, drove 100,000 operatives out of Ireland, and a writer of that time says multitudes of them went to America.